On Velvet Wings
by Elspeth
Summary: crow x gw. on the streets of tokyo Heero rises screaming vengence for his slain lover duo, killed by the yakuza. with him he brings another pilot, together they are the crows of tokyo
1. Default Chapter

Sometimes when someone we love is taken from us, a burning pain takes up residence within our soul. And though we hurt from the separation and long to be reunited with them, something deep within our heart will not let us rest, and to find peace we must first extract vengeance on those who saw fit to cross us and hurt our angels. Sometimes, just sometimes, if the will is strong enough, if the heart loved enough, and if fear is an unknown thing, these souls can cheat death and borrow time to put the wrong things right, they can convince the death walker to let them return and shall go under the veil of retribution, to hunt their murders and find once more the peace they crave. These people are known as the crows, this is the story of two of them, the crows of Tokyo " buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever"   
  
  
Amber eyes pierced the neon night as velvet wings carried the crow higher, soaring on the warm currents rising from the congested streets of Tokyo. Below, shinning in the night like jewelled ribbons the roads of the city weaved their way in and out of the towering obelisks of metal and glass, green houses of humanity where people were born, lived and died in their little man made labyrinths.  
  
Diving lower the bird cruised swiftly through the red light district, the garish lights spluttering on and off in reds blues and greens like a dying heart beat. Announcing in English and kanji the wares and services available in urine stained bars and private rooms. No one noticed the midnight bird swoop past them, those who did put it down to too much alcohol, drugs or both. A drunk business man with a pretty whore on his arm and his wedding ring hidden in his pocket, attempted with a sadistic grin to hit the soul carrier with his half empty bottle, but missed and fell drunkenly against his companions cleavage giggling childishly with blood shot eyes.  
  
The velvet winged one looked neither left nor right, it flew onward, it's tiny animal brain focused on delivering it's cargo back once more into the world of the living. So as deaths shadow could claim those who deserve to die, so as vengeance could be sated, so as a gundam pilot could rest.  
  
Onward through the night it flew, the shinning lights of the electric city sending rainbow colours shooting through ebony silk.  
  
With every steady beat of it's wings, far away an echoing tempo answered deep within the earths embrace, both calling to each other in a vibrant tattoo, rising up into pulsing thunder as they drew nearer to each other.  
  
Like black daggers the crows wings cut through the thick mists of the Tokyo bay, it's shadow falling across the sentinels of glass that lined the docks, a warning of what was to come. That soon deaths shadow would hunt the streets of Tokyo, another death walker would raise their voice to heaven, screaming a song of retribution, baptising themselves in the blood of the damned to ease a soul of pain.  
  
Twisting and spiralling up onto the Tokyo tower the dark one sailed, settling on the upper antennae the back bone of the city, hunching like a gargoyle and cawing loudly, awaiting the answering cry that would signal it's destination.  
  
Below it Tokyo waited, the metal jungle spread out like a web in all directions, tiny packets of green ensnared within it's grasp here and there, signifying the superstition and love of tradition the populace still resiliently clung to in the face of the modern world.  
  
Just beyond the main city was the answering cry, ripping through the voices of Babel that was the song of the city. An old ancient call for justice pulled the crow from it's perch, plunging through the glittering marble tombs and crumbling mausoleums, broken angels and decaying flowers, above ground mimicking the rot bellow.  
  
In a flurry of feathers it landed, skipping across the still pristine black marble marker excitedly, it's goal found.  
  
Glancing heavenward into the artificial light polluted green sky it screeched hoarsely, it's beak tapping viciously upon the stone, as under ground something stirred.  
  
Sinew connected to sinew, rapidly forming a fibrous mesh over yellowing bone. Muscle spun over the top, stretching then filling out, blood suddenly rushing through withered leathery veins pouring into the eroded heart, it's crimson flow causing it to shudder and then once more beat. Stronger and stronger the sound grew, with every contraction organs began to fill out, hesitantly reaching and grasping life once more, trying to remember how to function in the mortal world again as black eyes snapped open, dry cracked lips gasping, violently forcing air into deflated lungs and ripping the stitches that had sown his dead mouth shut.  
  
Above the harbinger hopped to the ground, eyes fixed upon the dry packed earth hungrily, ruffling it's feather impatiently as the sky suddenly wept, rain pummelling the earth into soft mud in a torrent of tears.  
  
With a splintering sound of wood a pale hand clawed it's way through the filth, fingers digging into the earth and hauling out a dark figure to the surface. A final surge of effort brought the man sprawling out across the grave gasping and shuddering, unfocused eyes blinking into the force of the rain that plastered his black hair to his head, tracing icy rivulets through his dirt encrusted face.  
  
Moaning he rolled onto his side heaving, tightly balling up gripping his stomach as it wrenched brutally spewing a stinking puddle of formaldehyde onto the earth beside him as his body expelled the trappings of death.  
  
Shakily he stood, grasping his own grave for support and shivering in the cold night air. Confused and disorientated, he glanced around the graveyard, eyes narrowing as his gaze fell upon a familiar figure stood looking at a grave a little way off.  
  
The mans hair was wild and matted, hard muscle showing in his bare arms and back, carved from years of training. On his shoulder perched the black demon that had summoned him back from purgatory.  
  
Heero Yui's fist clenched in anger, the veins in his arms rising in temper, as he stared at the simple granite grave in front of him. Tears of rage and loss streaking his hardened face as he read the words scarred into its surface again and again  
  
" Here lies Duo Maxwell  
Friend, brother, koi,  
A soul of light   
Cruelly sent into the night"  
  
As the clouds broke for a moment the moons light spilled across the pale flesh of his back, the shape of a crow carved into his back, his new title scared into his flesh in vivid purple welts, on his right temple the entrance wound of the bullet still showed, announcing to the world how his life ended.  
  
The newly risen man stumbled towards Heero, his feet slipping in the mud as he joined his side. The Japanese man grunted briefly at the new arrival as obsidian eyes stared at the teddy bear grave next to Duo's, widening as unknown words cut his heart like a dagger.  
  
"Celeste Maxwell  
Viciously taken from us with child,  
Sister, friend and love."  
  
With an anguished howl he threw back his head screaming with rage. She'd been pregnant and he'd not known, he was to be a father and she'd never got the chance to tell him before she was killed  
  
He sunk to his knees, hugging the grave, laying his cheek against the cool stone willing it to become her body within his arms once more. Hero placed a hand on the warriors shoulder kneeling beside him as his fingers still traced the words on Duo's headstone.  
" They'll pay" he whispered coldly, Prussian ice narrowing as the rain dripped off his dark bangs into his eyes.  
" My koi and my niece" he growled. The other raised his head, his expression hardening as he nodded, standing on steady legs and turning his piercing gaze out to the city that had taken their lives, revenge beating within his breast and flowing through him like fire.  
  
" Koroshite yaru" he breathed, the crow taking off from his grave, leaving the words Chang Wufei behind upon the stone and landing on his shoulder, knighting him with the name of the crow  
  
  
" Just paint your face in shadows smile  
Slipping me away from you  
It doesn't matter how you hide  
Find you if we're wanting to  
Every night I fall  
Every night I scream your name  
Every night I fall  
Dream the crow black dream" 


	2. vision

gomen guys i know it has been oh so long, but im finally back writing i hope you still wanna read * hugs* ele  
In the midnight calm silver malice ripped the sky apart in a violent rape. The clouds, once heavy and grey shocked into turbulent purples and whites as the rain continued it's steady march across the silvered panes of the glass apartment buildings. The airy sanctuaries from the sewered streets below glowed as the lightning danced across the sky, filling the rooms with daylight for the briefest instant before plunging them into lonely darkness again.  
  
In the sea of silk sheets and feathered pillows, blonde strands of hair lay plastered to the man's brow, weighed down by beads of anxious sweat. Tonight the techno pulse of the traffic and pounding heartbeat of the club below had not ripped slumber from him. Nor had the storms angry tantrum hammered through his head. The childlike man still slept for all the cacophony round him, but the wrinkle in his brow and creases with in the sheets, death gripped by his feminine fist told of a far from restful sleep.  
  
Like ghosts of the past memories of a year ago danced through his subconscious, hues of red, squeals of tyres the countless nights searching to be rewarded with a woman's dying screams within a stark white room. Before even screaming became too much effort for her chopped body to support and the room was left with the agonised squeal of a flat lining monitor.  
  
Twisting he sort comfort from the mattress, but its warmth registered as clammy coldness within his head. The bloated putrid face of his friend rose behind his eyelids. Flat dead eyes peering back at his with their lifeless, glassy stare as the body bag was ripped open upon the dock. Dreams of the damned, horrific, tortured but nightly occurrences for the fair skinned man panting in the suffocating heat of the Japanese storm.   
  
Jerking his body awake Quatre stared blankly at the far wall. Wide blue eyes boring into the shadows, trying to pin the prancing shadows, currently twisting into echoes from his dream.   
  
Still shaking, his muscles stiff and unresponsive he fumbled for the brass light switch by his bed. As the faint warm glow sent the shadows slithering back into the furthest corners of the room, he tried to concentrate on the drone of the city below. Fastening on any sound that would block out the heady thunder of his own racing heart, beating within his ears.  
  
As his hand fastened upon one of the many prescription bottles by his bedside he concentrated instead upon his own ragged breathing. Forcing it under control, he swallowed down the valium, prozac and asprin dry, pulling a face like a gargoyle at the bitter taste, lying to himself that already their calming effect was soothing his skittish mind.  
  
Sitting up he ran through straightening the covers and adjusting his pyjamas like a ritual. Nice normal things to make his dreams feel unreal, nightmares, fantasy. But the graves lying in the itchijo cemetery set in stone that this was not the case.  
  
In the next room "stairway to heaven "played, its muffled strains penetrating the walls with its mournful lullaby, mingling with the heavy patter of rain outside.  
  
The man smiled his eyes focusing through their tired drugged haze on the photograph above the dresser. The six of them as they were, stood in the Giza shopping centre at Christmas, rain plastering their clothes to their skin. The lights of an artificial Japanese Christmas shinning halos round their heads in the frosty December air. Their breathe fogging in front of them as they'd struggled to hide presents from each other while shopping together.  
  
It felt so real, so close he could almost hear duo's voice again  
  
"Hey rain is just god when he's feeling a bit down, smile back and wave and he'll cheer up"  
  
He wanted to cry but the tears remained stuck like acid in his tear ducts, the valium forming a happy plug on his emotions. A disquieting numbness seeping through him.   
  
He stood on weak legs, deciding to walk his dream off, making his way to the fish tank like window running the length of the room, looking out across the city of lights.  
  
The glare of the tower blocks blinded him for a second, sending him shying back into the shadows, light had become an unknown visitor. Everything in his life had become black of late; inside he was sure if someone were to cut out his heart it would be dead, black and rotten. The valium was making him think strangely again, feeling thinking as if trying to struggle, call out through a muggy cotton wool haze, he almost wished for a moment of pure pain, just to assure himself he was alive and not some wandering wraith.  
  
Dizziness over came him again, a great weight settling on his chest squeezing the air from his lungs, a suffocating heat forcing him to pant, his forehead pressed against the cool glass searching for a way to clear his thoughts. From the corner of his eye the shadows moved towards him, rising up spreading great black wings. The unearthly screech of a crow growing louder and louder making him cover his ears screaming in a vain attempt to drown it out.  
  
His reality disintegrated, the shadow seeping into his vision, a thousand amber eyes burning in the dark their cries of anger echoing deep within him. As one the inky bodies flew round him, their mind touching his as subtly as the feathers in their wings. Dead, dead things that's what they were, dead that could not rest, an ancient entity born of the first murdered mans soul. As his outraged cry had reached the heaven some power had made this, and it was coming. Out there in the night the ancients stirred, a man had dared to harness his soul to oblivion to put something right. And the crow awakened.  
  
Quatre stumbled forward his limbs leaden, lethargic reaching out for sanctuary from his vision. Through the muffled chaos of his senses his hand registered a clatter followed by a sharp slicing pain to his tender palm. Glancing down his blood dripped onto ground he could not see the vermillion droplets reflected in the circling yellow eyes as they drew nearer.   
  
Yet behind it all he could hear them, the cries, pathetic, mad, lost, hurt of the dead, a chant that rivalled even the screech of the birds, the song of the wronged. A choir of anguish assaulted his ears each a story, each a sin trembling he felt his own tears fall in mourning even as his hands flew up to protect  
his face from the birds around him.  
  
Shaking, Quatre was shaking someone was calling him, calling his name through the fog of the vision, shouting over the death carriers call. But so far away, like a distant echo  
  
"QUATRE" his eyes focused tuning into the room again slowly as his lovers face came blurred and sharpened before him. The mouth moved but Quatre struggled to make out the words til the sharp pain in his hand snapped him back out of his premonition. The darkness dissolving leaving his wincing in the harsh electric light of the apartment.  
  
"Quatre?" Trowa whispered it more softly this time, acknowledging the recognition now in his koi's blue eyes instead of the previous blank madness. Reaching out a quivering hand Quatre looked in disbelief at his slashed hand, his blood running in rivulets down his slender arms before pooling on the floor. Opening his mouth he struggled with speech the words thick in his dry mouth.  
  
" Trowa…something…has happened something's awake…Heero…Wufei..I…feel them but don't I…" he was cut off as the taller man placed him back into bed shushing him as a child  
  
"Just dreams and the dead Quatre they can't hurt you, sleep now" pressing his lips to the others forehead he tucked the other into bed before bending to pick up the broken photo his lover had knocked to the floor. With a sigh he dropped it with a clatter into the waste basket  
" dreams and the dead" he whispered glancing at the faces of his dead friends now streaked with Quatre's blood as his hand turned out the light.  
"That's all we have"  
  
As the door closed Quatre's fevered eyes stared at the bird watching him from the bottom of the bed with human like intelligence.  
" I know why you are here my friend" reaching forward he tried to touch the blue black sheen of its feathers before with a cracked caw it flew through the glass out into the night. The thunder rumbled in the distance as the continuing rain whispered the psychic to sleep.  
  
The gate man shook his head and relocked the gate of the cemetery that night, disturbed by its insistent clanging in the wind while cursing under his breath, his temper raised from being disturbed by a childish prank. He did not notice his feet disturbing the fresh prints of another in the mud of the drive as he hurried back to his home, hunched in the rain. Come morning the prints were gone, everything was normal save for two dug up graves he found later on his rounds.  
  
"Crawling in my skin,  
These wound they will not heal,  
Fear is how I fall,  
Confusing what is real"  
  
"Crawling "Linkin Park  
  
WYTCHES CAVERN 


End file.
